I used to use a almost inaudible Dell Dimension 4100. After examining the features that made the system VERY quiet (i.e. ducting, plastic enclosure), I set out to build a 2.53GHz P4 system in a Dell case.

Unfortunately, despite my efforts, my PC is still much louder than the Dell Dimension 4100. I think that the culprit could be the whiny fan on my Gainward Geforce 4 Ti 4600 (Golden Sample) / 120 GB Western Digital SE HD (8mb cache). I am starting to believe that a passively cooled video card would be the ABSOLUTE way to go; however, this Dell was outfitted with a GeForce 2 Ultra (which has a little fan on the GPU). Another reason could be that the 4100 used PIII's, which run relatively cool.

Therefore, I would like to know (for all of you Dell owners out there) if the current high-power Dell PCs like the latest 8250 or 8200 (with powerful graphics cards like Geforce 4) actually run cool (like what temps do you guys get?) and silent. I know that the Dell 8200/8250 both offer the same HD I have in my system so if anyone has a setup like mine, please help! Thanks!

I used to have a 8200 (2.5GHz w/ 9700 Pro), and currently a 4300) that I use as my sound reference. At idle, it was extremely quiet with passive cooling on the video card. The video card fan was by far very audible otherwise. I replaced that with a Zalman ZM80-HP, but on the Dell it wasn't satisfactory because of the lack of airflow in the case. It worked, but the interior did get very, very warm. The plastic case helped minimize the high pitched frequencies coming from the hard drive, but overall it was muted although not exactly silent.

The motherboard wasn't very friendly in regards to temp. monitoring. I didn't have an actual thermometer, and there isn't/wasn't software that allows one to read that temp from the motherboard. I'm sorry I can't give you specific numbers.

However, the computer did get extremely hot, and was actually only silent under idle conditions. If you put your hand behind the case, you'd feel a nice warm rush of air coming from the PS and chassis fan. Under load, however, the temp regulated fan started to go nuts, and consequently the computer got to be VERY loud.

i let the pc on for one week and the air comming from the pc was ok, than i ran distributed.net for 3 days, the air was warm, but i did not notice any stability problem.
as auxyone told, there is no was to monitor the cpu temp, the only temp i have acces to is the ibm drive (36-37 C at idle 39-40 C max).

at this point my friends thought the pc was very quiet, but not enough for me as the radeon 9700 fan is noisy.
so i removed it and put my old matrox mystique 4 mb.
the pc is much quieter, not silent of course, as the HD make some noise (i can hear the psu fan too, but it is very quiet).

overall, i'm very satisfied with that pc, if you change the video card, you can get a quiet pc . i'd recommend it if you don't want to spend a lot of time looking for quiet composants in order to build a custom pc.
(i live in switzerland, there are not many shops with quiet composants and i didn't have too much time trying to find the best noise/airflow compromise for a custom made pc... so i didn't have much choice.)

auxyone: i was thinking adding a ZM80A-HP to the radeon 9700 tx, do you think i have any chance? (the 9700 tx runs at 275/270 vs 325/310 for the pro)). i do NOT plan gaming a lot, but i need the tv-out.
maybe a quiet fan at 7v will help?

read the zalman messageboard on their homepage, i know that they make a heatsink that will fit the 9700pro just have to put on more thermal goop than usual cause the cards r thinner than the geforce cards or something like that.

Yeah, the ZM80A-HP and ZM80-HP both fit the 9700/9700 Pro. (The only difference between the A and the standard is a slight recess at one edge of one of the heatsinks to compensate for possible install problems.) You do have to put a little more goop on it to to make up for the gap between the shim and the processor, but it's easy enough, even for me.

However, the heatpipe gets very hot to the touch on the 9700 (on my Pro anyway), and I think to be on the safe side it's good to have sufficient cooling in the case. That said, I haven't had a single issue with the video card at all. When I first installed the heatpipe, I ran 3Dmark2001 on infinite loop while I ran errands for the better half of the day. When I came back, it was still going strong.

it must be the hd, because my dell 4100's hd is as loud as an airplane, or so it seems. there are only two fans, psu, and exhause and they are both very quiet. cd-r sounds like its about to blow the case to bits, tho w/ it's shananihans. good thing it only is working <1% of the day

You could always use the zalman heatpipe cooler and combine it with a zalman style fan above it at reduced voltage (such as a panaflo at 7v or 5v). I've heard by doing this the card feels warm to the touch instead of hot.

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